I started this post late last week, mired in hormone hell and starting the semester in the absurdly cold and grumpy as hell, since which has utterly all faded as brutal temps gave way to snow and the kids got over their terrible colds and I nestled this morning into Aaron's armpit at 4 a.m. and thought of the day ahead, the one I'm in now, working quietly at home on my nursing home curriculum and planning a chicken paprika pierogi stew...so, obviously, I go up and down a lot still, since today I'm perfectly content. Last week, inner panicked lamenting. "Why o lord must I be where I am not wanted some more after so much humiliating unwanted already? I do not know. But I am an unwanted relation, so that is where God wants me. That was the upshot college assembly address to open the semester. It was Sister's best address, a flat out full throated liturgical admonition. I took it to heart and am trying to apply it. Being a daughter in law prophesies old age, I figure, where eventually I will also find myself against my will, and there humbled and weakened, possibly unwanted and probably pissed off, because that is what awaits us all. Even if I had washed the feet of the poor for decades like the nuns I work for, I'd someday be 82 years old, which sucks. So lesson 1: if you find that where you are sucks, be grateful, it's good practice for the Suckage that Lies Ahead inevitably. AND 2: for all you know the equanimity that you can muster might be the very thing that someone needs from you, right there right now where you are. Write on a little piece of paper: "I am the face of God for someone else today." And then turn to face the moment you are in with as little anger and as much kindness as you can. Presumably as much as you can is relative (I'm hoping) since, well, I'm not frigging God eh? So when I have to smile through my in-laws' condemnation again, suffering their delusion that they are the center of the universe and I an unworthy supplicant for membership to that universe, if I can do so composed and quiet and suffering my humiliations with grace, or at least in silence, that's as close to being God as I'm aiming for (versus smiting them, which God also gets to do so I kind of don't see why I get gipped out of that, but say la vee). Admonition: Be the face of God for your husband because though they have wronged and spurned you and yours without mercy, his parents are people he loves. Like the fact that I will die (and because of those people probably die alone once they've successfully offed me in my husband's mind once again if I had to make a bet, is my darkest thought), I must accept where I am now: related to them. So says the Bible, and so says the shrink. You know you've come to a hard place of required personal growth when your shrink and the Bible are on the same page :/... I just hope it matters. That it makes him happy. Please o lord. And then that we can move on, FORWARD into our own life and out of the shadow of their life and bad memories both. Please o lord."
I should get the in-law thing over with, get past it, but it's hard to make myself do it because: 1 I know as soon as I get past it, lo they'll still be alive (sigh) and so I'll have to have deal with it again as it's always Easter or some shit, plus 2 because every weekend when it's the choice between sexual healing or dinner with the folks, hmmm decisions decisions, but staying in bed for hours consistently gets the win (yay!).
Once again, therefore, I drew up the balance sheet of all I knew and all I believed, and examined it again. As unemotionally as possible I compared it with all that is now happening to us. And here, to put it frankly, is what I thought I saw. *** First and foremost: no, a thousand times no—however tragic the present conflict may be, it contains nothing that should shake the foundations of our faith in the future. ~ from the first 1% of Activation of Energy, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
Ears' favorite song currently:
